


(this is bigger than us)

by eirabach



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Family Drama, Future Fic, Liam junior, Light Angst, Once Upon a Time the Soap Opera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 21:24:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7986763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eirabach/pseuds/eirabach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Killian admits his worst crime to Emma, she decides there's a way they can make it better. She may be wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(this is bigger than us)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seastarved](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seastarved/gifts), [High-Seas-Swan (FangLang)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FangLang/gifts).



> For seastarved and high-seas-swan on tumblr for the following prompts: K/You hear that? That's the sound of my awesomeness/I paid for half and you ate three quarters.
> 
> This is probably not what you were expecting, sorry guys.

Fairy tales are funny things.

They have their own rules, their own logic, their own way of meting out punishment to the wrongdoers and rewards to the deserving. It’s just that sometimes, the lines between the two aren’t all that clear cut.

She’d been horrified when Killian had first told her, his voice low and strained in the darkness of their bedroom as he admitted to the murder of his own father, to the rotten circumstances of his childhood, to the guilt he carried for orphaning his own brother and cursing him to the same loveless, desperate life that he’d had.

“I at least had Liam,” he’d said, forcing the words through gritted teeth, his fingers tight on the bedsheets, “but who did he have, Swan?”

She’d no answer for him, only the soft pressure of her fingers in his hair and the dampness on her cheeks when she lent down to kiss him, and he doesn’t ask again. 

Live goes on, with all its dramas and joys and fictional bad guys, and Killian seems to move on, pushing his feelings about his long gone family down, down, down until Emma could almost pretend that he’d never confessed his worst sins into the curls of her hair.

Almost.

It had taken some time, some research, and an awful lot of awkward conversations with a Regina who wasn’t very keen on recalling that time she cursed a whole realm to misery, but eventually she’d tracked down a young boy - parentless and troubled and living with the Lost Boys in the fairies’ convent - with eyes as blue as the calmest sea and a frown that bit at her heart.

She hadn’t really given Killian much of a choice, rolling up to the house with Liam in tow and presenting him, more or less, as a fait accompli. Liam needed a family. Killian needed to make amends.

Liam had grimaced. Killian had looked at his feet. Henry had grumbled about sharing his room.

Emma, the lost, unwanted little girl who’d bounced from foster home to group home to a park bench, couldn’t imagine anything more beautiful, more _fairy tale_ , than creating a family out of their broken, disparate parts.

Of course, like most best laid plans, it all goes to shit.

Killian tries, he really does. He’s a natural with Henry, and even if their dynamic is sometimes more like slightly rebellious friends than respectful step-father and son it seems to work for them, for all of them. Emma had been certain that Killian would be able to turn that mischievous, brotherly charm on Liam. Liam, however, has other ideas.

So many things have been forgiven and forgotten in this town, between the members of Emma’s own family, that the first time Liam spits their father’s murder in Killian’s face she’s thoroughly gobsmacked. She waits for Killian to defend himself - his father _sold_ him, he drowns daily in the regret of it - but instead he just picks at the tip of his hook, his face flushed and his brows drawn tight, and lets Liam storm off to his room, the slamming of the door echoing down the stairs behind him.

“Are you going to let him get away with that?” she asks, in genuine curiosity.

Killian doesn’t look up from his hook.

“Why not. The lad’s not wrong is he.”

He turns away from her, and she sees the bowing of his shoulders under the weight of his guilt.

He doesn’t give up though, she thinks he might eb fundamentally incapable of such a thing, and he holds a trump card as soon as the weather clears - there was never a Jones boy who didn’t live for the sea after all.

Emma waves them off one crisp spring morning, Henry weighed down with the coolbox, and Liam carrying two day-glo life vests that both boys had turned their noses up at in horror.

They make it back from the ship by lunchtime, subdued, pink-cheeked, and very, very wet.

“What on Earth?” Emma stares at them as they drip morosely onto the linoleum, “Did you forget to take the ship?”

Liam blows his nose loudly and luxuriantly on his sleeve.

“Just a touch of roughhousing, love.” Killian says, clearly aiming to sound reassuring but betrayed by the chattering of his teeth. His jacket is torn and there’s a mark on his wrist that looks like a rope burn.

Emma raises her eyebrows. “Looks like it’s about to be a touch of pneumonia to me. Get upstairs, get dry, and for god’s sake whatever you did, don’t do it again.”

Henry raises his eyebrow at Liam who scuffs his sneaker squeakily across the kitchen floor.

“K,” he grumbles.

The boys traipse upstairs, leaving Killian looking disconsolately at the puddles they’ve left in their wake.

“Did you think I was not talking to you?” she asks, watching the spread of goosebumps across his exposed chest, “Because I was definitely talking to you.”

“How are you at hope speeches, Swan? Because I’m starting to think we need one.”

Emma sighs, sidling up to him and helping him out of his sodden leather in order to press her nose into the comparative dryness of his shirt. “Was it that bad?”

“Worse,” Killian drops his head and nuzzles his cold nose into her hair, “the boy won’t listen to me. Everything I say he has an answer to, every suggestion I make is wrong. He hates me.”

Emma huffs. “He’s a pre-teen. I have it on pretty good authority that they tend to hate more or less everything.”

“He could have killed us today, all of us,” Killian says, and there’s a tremor in his tone that Emma hasn’t heard since the Underworld. “And I don’t – I don’t know what to do.”

“Do you want me to talk to him?”

“No,” he shakes his head and scatters water droplets across her shoulders, “no, I ruined his life. It’s up to me to make things right.”

She thinks they’ve cracked it the night they order pizza, the boys laughing as she and Killian fight over the last slice of pepperoni

(“I paid for half and you ate three quarters!”

“Pirate, Swan.”)

Before dropping in front of the TV in a long-limbed heap so that Henry can introduce Liam to the wonders of the PlayStation. It’s lovely, really. And she lets her eyelids begin to drop, resting her head on Killian’s shoulder as drowsiness overtakes the sound of computerised weaponry, and Henry’s joyous cry of “You hear that? That’s the sound of my awesomeness!” over the killshot.

Her eyes spring open at the sound of raised voices. Henry is standing over Liam who has hunched over on the floor, his arms folded tight over his chest and his face twisted in a scowl. Killian is standing to the side, with his hand held out in supplication and an expression of futile desperation.

“Apologise!” Henry snarls.

Liam seems to curl even further in on himself, defiance all over his features. “No.”

“Boys, please,” Killian pleads, “let’s not argue.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to let him talk to you like that!” Emma has no idea what’s been said, but going by the way Henry’s voice is shaking she knows it’s got to be bad, “You’d ground me for a month! Mom, tell him!”

“Tell - tell who? What?” she asks, her voice heavy with sleep and her head not yet in the game, “What’s going on?”

“Liam said - “

“Nothing, Swan - “

Neither Henry or Killian finish their sentences. Liam stands, his fists balled at his sides, and glares at each of them in turn.

“Forget it, you’re not my family. Just - just leave me alone!”

He’s gone, another slamming door and a cold draft in his wake, before Emma can even begin to formulate a reply.

It’s late, and it’s dark, and he’s only twelve. It doesn’t take much to organise a task force to find him, Emma and a guilty Henry spearheading the effort. Killian comes too, of course, but he says little, his mouth drawn in a tight line.

When David asks him if Liam has any secret hiding places he might have taken off for he scoffs bitterly, “How the devil would I know? The boy can’t abide me.”

But it’s Killian who finds him, tucked up against the wall of the cannery within sight of the _Jolly Roger_ , and Killian who kneels before him and whispers quiet words until he agrees to follow them home.

By the time they crawl into bed, Emma is so exhausted her bones ache. Yet sleep still doesn’t come easily, not with the way that Killian lies next to her burning holes into the ceiling with his stare, five lifetimes of regret writ large all over his face.

Emma doesn’t have the words to reassure him – she doesn’t know if there are any – so instead she runs her fingers down his arm and over the scars at his wrist.

“Don’t,” he says, but she knows him well enough by now to recognise the way his voice cracks on the word.

He knows her pretty well, too, knows that his hatred of himself isn’t going to stop her loving him the best she can, so she’s hardly surprised when he rolls on to his side with his back to her. Instead she presses a kiss into the space between his shoulder blades and tucks her knees against his thighs.

“It won’t happen straight away,” she whispers against the scar that crosses his spine, “we need to give it time.”

She feels more than hears the sigh that escapes him, “You’d know, I suppose.”

“We both know. To be alone for so long… it’s hard to accept that you don’t have to be. That somebody might care. Might love you, even.”

He rolls back slightly, and she wriggles away so that she can meet his eyes.

“How are we going to do this, Swan?”

Emma pulls him back down towards her so that she can tuck her head into the crook of his neck and rest her hand over his heart.

“Damned if I know. One day at a time, I expect. One day at a time, and together.”

Killian huffs a kiss into her hair and reaches over to entwine their fingers.

“Aye love, together it is.”

They fall asleep eventually, wrapped up in each others reassurances, and Emma’s last thought before sleep takes her is that it’s going to be okay – they’ve never failed, not forever, not permanently, and they’re not about to start now.

It’s going to be all right.

This is a fairy tale, after all.


End file.
